I need a vacation!

The month of July has been a lot of fun. Jason and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary. What a blessing it is to be married to my dearest and best friend. Jason is one of those people who you love to be around becuase he has a contagious personality. If you're down, go spend some time with Jason. He's awesome. I love you sweetie!


Here is a fun picture of Jason on our anniversary. We spent the night at the beautiful Hotel Palomar in Dallas. This hotel is really modern and sophisticated. We LOVED it. We also enjoyed an amazing meal next door at Trader Vics. It's a unique island theme restaurant with delicious drinks and food. I highly recommend it!

We had the most amazing vacation in Taos NM. It was great because we got to spend a lot of time relaxing. The last few months have been a lot of change for us. We have hired some new employees and moved to a new office, thus taking on a lot of greater responsibilities and liabilities. While we are confident this is exactly where the Lord wants us to be it does add to our level of stress. I'm really proud of Jason and the great work he has been doing since he has been taking on the majority of it all. If you haven't heard me mention PLG (Petra Lending Group) you should check us out www.petralending.com We've been helping a lot of ACU friends lately, and it's been tons of fun catching up with them..... Okay! I totally did not intend to go down such a rabbit hole there. Anyway.... back to Taos. It was great. We were there at the same time as Jason's parents were so we had a lot of help with Jacob. It allowed Jason and I some time together. We did a lot of reading and hanging out. One day Jason and I went over to Santa Fe. We enjoyed some really great galleries, and I took some fun pictures. On another day we drove out to the gorge and hiked down to some natural hot springs. When we were down there we met a couple who were ready to get into the spring and had no inhibitions with disrobing in front of us and getting in the spring! I took that as our que to leave, especially since we had Jacob with us. It was pretty funny though! All in all it was a great trip. Jacob did really awesome considering all of the changes. He had two teeth that were coming through, and the altitude change really took a toll on him. He ended up with a cold and cough, but smiled through all of it. I will say that the saving grace was the portable DVD player we bought before we left. Seriously, I'm certain it saved us a lot of crying. Now he's on a video fast. Ha! At first I thought I would never allow Jacob to watch that many DVD's, but when you are on the road for close to 12 hours you will do whatever you can to keep the little guy happy. I felt super guilty at first but all the guilt was gone by the time we were on our way back to Texas. What a trooper!


Our first day in Toas we went shopping and walked around Bent Street with Jason's parents. Here is Jacob outside a toy store that has amazing stuffed animals. Jacob's Grammie and Paw Paw bought this precious little monster (from Where The Wild Things Are) for him. It was a hit! The store owner even came out and watched him embrace the monster. It was really cute.


Three generations of O'Quinn boys....


The Hollyhocks were absolutley beautiful. I took lots of pictures of them. I can't believe I had the guts to take pictures among all of these bees! They were everywhere and huge!


Did I mention that we did lots of eating?!!! Taos has some of the greatest food! One of our favorite's is Michael's Kitchen. I think we ate there 3 or 4 times. They have some of the best new mexican cuisine, and an awesome bakery. Here is Jason with one of their delicious cinnamon rolls. Yum!


The only family photo we took. This was at the gorge before we ran into our "friends" at the hot spring.


I love this picture! If Jacob could say more, I think he would probably say "my dad is my hero". He really does prefer Jason over me. I love it that he loves his dad so much.

We had a wonderful time, but it's always good to be home.

Blessings.